Embodiment of perfection
by houseofmalfoy
Summary: A character study of Narcissa Malfoy during the second war


She woke up to the sound of laughter. Nothing could have unnerved her more.

This was no place for laughter.

They were outside in the gardens. Her gardens. The rose gardens she had spent countless afternoons having tea with the other pureblood Ladies; where Draco had once fallen into the water and given her a terrible fright. They were hers.

Now people she had once considered friends — that she once would have trusted with her life — were laughing in her gardens. Cruelly laughing, but she was too exhausted to make the slightest attempt at finding out why. She wasn't sure she wanted to know at all.

Finally she opened her eyes.

Every morning it cost her more effort to do so.

Opening her eyes meant seeing what had become. It meant facing what her life had turned into; what had been done to those she cherished by those she had once loved. Each morning the realization of what they did hurt her almost as much as their actions did.

In the drawing room downstairs she had once served them mead; joined in their laughter; been one of them. Her friends; people she trusted even if it was just because they respected her name above anything else.

She could barely fathom they were the same monsters that had given her the stinging bruises at her hips; that watched and laughed as she bled before them.

oOo

Had she not been their queen?

Had she — at the arm of Lucius Malfoy and right beside the Dark Lord's most loyal servants — not ruled them all?

They had once all been wrapped around the diamond ring tying her to the Malfoy name. She had been the empress of their society; picture perfect example of what a Lady of the Dark Lord's new world should be. She'd been royalty and nothing less.

oOo

If she only spent long enough thinking about what had once been: how she'd once gotten drunk with Yaxley and how she would gossip with Alecto and how she would use Macnair's feelings towards her to make Lucius jealous. If she spent long enough remembering she could pretend it was still here.

Where she was still their pureblood princess.

Funny how one could fall from queen to fool so sudden.

Instead of drinking with him, she could close her eyes and be hit with Yaxley's hands all over her. She never got rid of the feeling — she couldn't. Instead of Alecto's opinions on her sister she heard the witch's laughter when Amycus cursed her — she'd always had an awful laugh, that one. Macnair avoided her like the plague — she had no clue if it was for guilt or disgust and she had no desire to find out.

oOo

How far she'd fallen.

She had once been on top of the world. She'd had it all.

A perfect husband; perfect son; perfect name; perfect manor; perfect appearance. She had been the embodiment — the only definition alive — of perfection in every sense of the word.

Yet here she was.

Broken. Torn open to be tossed aside time and time again as if she was — as if she had never been anything but — absolutely nothing. As if they had never worshipped the ground she walked on, and her name had never been Black.

What was the point of having been perfect if you ended up a useless wreck all the same?

Her dreams of her perfection were now only worth holding onto — a hopeless imagination of what had once been and would never be again. To keep her sane and just angry enough to survive amidst the seemingly never ending reminder that any sense of perfection had been torn from her.

oOo

All her power, all her magic, and all her strength were useless as she so-called friendships she thought she'd had.

Her son's life dangled over her head to keep her from fighting. Powerful as she was she would never get to Hogwarts before one of the Carrows had gotten to Draco. They all knew she would never dare to risk his life.

They were right.

Their sneers, their curses, their touches, their insults, it was nothing. Nothing they could do to her meant a thing if it kept Draco alive. She would gladly endure it all for him. Gladly suffer through all this and more if it meant he stayed safe — as far as safe went.

If by the end of the war she was but a shell of herself or merely another casualty of war but he lived, she'd succeeded. Nothing else mattered. Nothing but him.

If she could not have perfection — if she could not have a life of her own not riddled with what this war would leave her with — at the very least let her son have what she would not. It would be perfect enough for him to live — for him to have the chance to grow out of the war, to grow up and be better than she was now.

Had he not always been worth more than her? She'd always thought so.

Draco would live.

Draco would be alright — as far as that was a possibility.

And because that so would she.


End file.
